Kobe’s Hoop Dreaming When He Says His Team Could Beat Jordan’s

Team USA's Earvin "Magic" Johnson whips the flag in ecstasy during the gold medal ceremony during the 1992 Summer Games. Crunch the numbers and the Dream Team would beat this year's squad. Photo: Susan Ragan/AP

When Kobe Bryant said his 2012 U.S. Olympic basketball team could beat the Dream Team of 1992, responses spanned from the raised eyebrows of polite fans to the outright derision offered by several members of the ’92 squad.

“For him to compare those two teams is not one of the smarter things he ever could have done,” Michael Jordan told the Associated Press.

“Other than Kobe, LeBron and Kevin Durant, I don’t think anybody else on that team makes our team,” Sir Charles told a Philadelphia radio station.

The great thing about this kind of matchup is that it’s purely hypothetical, the sort of stuff that fuels bar arguments into the wee hours. Jordan or LeBron? Magic or Chris Paul? Sadly, there is no answer as to which team is truly better. Or is there?

“When I heard what Kobe said, and then saw the backlash from the Dream Team, it struck me that there’s an empirical way to figure this out,” said David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah University. “We can use the numbers to get into what would probably have happened had these two teams met. This is not purely a matter of opinion.”

United States players, from right, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, James Harden (12), Kobe Bryant (10) and Kevin Durant gather for a men’s team basketball practice at the 2012 Summer Olympics on Saturday. Photo: Jae C. Hong/AP

Berri is uniquely qualified to lend perspective to the matter. But first, it helps to understand that the defensive attitude of the Dream Team toward its legacy is based in part on the course USA Basketball has taken in the 20 years since Jordan & Co. dominated the Olympic hardwood. The progression looks something like this:

In response to a disappointing third-place finish by U.S. amateurs in the 1988 Olympics, the U.S. — freed up by FIBA’s decision to allow professionals into the ranks — enlisted the best the NBA had to offer in assembling a Dream Team of 11 future Hall of Famers, headlined by Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.

That squad won its six Olympic games by an average of better than 43 points as Barkley threw elbows into Angolans en route to the gold.

During the three ensuing Olympics, the talent of the U.S. team, while still very high, steadily decreased even as the rest of the world improved. Average victory margins fell to 31.8 in 1996, 21.6 in 2000 (where the U.S.’s two wins over Lithuania came by a combined 11 points) and a mere 4.6 in 2004.

That ’04 number is skewed by the fact the team went 4-3 in the tournament, won just one game by more than 10 points and suffered the most lopsided defeat in the history of the program, 92-73 to Argentina. The Americans finished third.

In ’08, the United States made a concerted effort to win back respectability, beginning with the nickname Redeem Team, and took gold in convincing fashion.

Which brings us to 2012. This year’s roster features several holdovers from Beijing: Bryant, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Deron Williams and Carmelo Anthony. It adds the brightest young star on the planet, Kevin Durant, and his running mates from the NBA Finals, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. It features the game’s best power forward, Kevin Love. It is again the prohibitive favorite to win gold.

None of which, however, helps determine whether Bryant might have been correct in his prediction of victory over the Dream Team. It’s a different era with different players, yes, but to help us, we can turn to Berri’s statistic, which combines everything that happens on a basketball court into one handy metric.

Start with the understanding that although NBA players with the highest Q rating tend to be the most prolific scorers, those players are able to increase their scoring simply by taking more shots — a tactic that frequently is not in the best interest of their teams.

NBA success, as measured in victories, hinges on three things: acquiring possession of the basketball, maintaining possession of the basketball and effectively turning those possessions into points. Scoring efficiency is a vital component, but so are things like defensive rebounds, steals and a lack of turnovers.

Berri’s formula distills every facet of an expanded box score into a number called Wins Produced (WP), which tells us concisely how many victories a player is worth to his team over the course of a season, or per 48 minutes (the length of a game). Visit Berri’s Web site for a complete rundown.

(It should be pointed out that WP is not the only stat that claims to provide such an overall measurement, with others including John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating and Justin Kubatko’s Win Shares. Berri, however, claims that his is the most accurate of the bunch, and has a bunch of complex algorithms — not to mention an objective critic — that back up his claims.)

In Berri’s stat, an average NBA player produces 0.100 wins per 48 minutes (reflecting that because an average team would win half its games, or 0.500 of them, per 48 minutes, each of its five equally average players on the court would be worth one-fifth that amount per game.) Star players are worth twice that: 0.200 per 48. We know the stat works because on average, teams’ cumulative WP comes to within about two wins of their actual results.

The ’92 Olympic squad (with the exception of collegian Christian Laettner) was made up of players whose talent ranged from excellent to otherworldly, based on numbers from the NBA season immediately preceding the Games. (It should be noted that Michael Jordan has only the fifth-highest WP48 on the team because the formula adjusts for position, and the general abundance of quality shooting guards makes it more difficult for them to distinguish themselves. Skilled big men and point guards are more scarce, so the best among them are far better than average.)

We don’t need numbers to understand that this was a stunningly good team, but the stats back up the hype. Every player is at least 50 percent better than average, with half the roster achieving superstar status.

As evidenced by Tyson Chandler and Andre Iguodala, non-scoring attributes like rebounding, assists and steals matter. A lot.

Despite his mini-meltdown in the NBA Finals, James Harden is better than many people give him credit for.

When it comes to producing victories, Kobe Bryant simply isn’t very good, primarily because he takes a ton of shots with off-the-charts inefficiency. (Bryant led the NBA in shots attempted last year, while his .430 shooting percentage was good for 241st.)

This last point actually goes a long way toward explaining the U.S.’s bronze-medal finish in 2004, though that had nothing to do with Bryant. The player who led the ’04 team in shots taken during the Olympic tournament was also the least valuable Olympian of the modern era: Allen Iverson, whose WP48 for the 2003-04 NBA season was negative 0.018. (Iverson finished 32nd in the NBA in attempts that year, largely because he played in only 48 of 82 games, but only four players in the league played as many minutes and shot worse.)

“Bad things happen when inefficient players take lots of shots,” said Berri. “People like to think that with just a touch of fairy dust that ’04 team could have won gold, but the numbers don’t lie — the real culprit was simply a lack of talent. They were barely better than an average NBA team.”

With that in mind, Kobe being an undisputed leader of Team USA is a clear danger sign looking forward. If he decides to channel his inner Iverson and leads the team in shots attempted, it will unequivocally hinder the U.S.’s chances of defending its title.

Should Bryant allow the team to play to its strengths, however, there will be absolutely no stopping it. It’s the most talented Olympic roster since 1996, with one of the game’s all-time greatest players, James, in the prime of his career. That actually helps cement the point: As great as James is, he would have ranked no better than fourth on that ’92 squad, according to Berri’s calculations, which tells us all we really need to know.

“The 2012 team is very talented, so they certainly could win a game against the Dream Team,” said Berri. “Still, there’s no question that the ’92 team would be favored—just not by 25 points, like Pippen said.